Awakening to

Awakening to Consciousness in the Etheric* JÖRGEN SMIT “Awakening to consciousness in the etheric” is a very special subject. First, we need to define it more clearly. A particular problem in modern life, indeed a pathological situation, is the split people experience between their inner life and the outside world as is seen in material terms. Anything we experience in the material, physical world has an existence of its own, far removed from any spiritual, moral qualities. Conversely, the life of mind and spirit has an inwardness that is partly subjective and does not influence the physical, material world—it stays in isolation. In anthroposophy, we endeavor to overcome the split by seeking a path of knowledge that leads to the spiritual in man, and from the spiritual in man to the spiritual in the universe. 1 This will only succeed if the spiritual comes alive in us, assuming reality and is taken into the physical realm and made to be active in the physical, material world. All our thoughts have shadow nature in the conscious mind as inner thoughts although, in reality, they well forward from the etheric world of the spirit (without it, there would be no thoughts). On the other hand, there is the whole field of sensory perception. This perception originates in the spiritual, essential. It comes from outside but does not come to conscious awareness as something that lives; it dies down into something phantom-like, and all our sensory perceptions are taken up by the conscious mind as something connected with an object. We therefore do not live in spiritual reality inwardly—our thinking lacks the essence of the spirit; and outwardly, we do not perceive the spiritual essence of the world that presents itself through the senses. We are divided between the phantoms of sensory perception and the shadows of thought. Darkness reigns on either side with respect to the full reality. It is glorious to know that we can reach that reality, although this does need effort—we do not “get it for nothing.” *Original title: Das Erwachen des Bewusstseins im Ætherischen. Record of a lecture published in Jörgen Smit, Der werdende Mensch. Zur meditativen Vertiefung des Erziehens. 2. Aufl. Stuttgart: Freies Geistesleben 1990. Reprinted in Der Merkurstab 1996; 49: 453-62. English by A.R. Meuss, FIL, MTA. 44

We can leave the realm of shadows and phantoms behind only in the search for insight. To our ordinary thinking this does appear shadowy and phantom-like to begin with. In its depths, however, lies something that goes unnoticed although full of life and activity. We must slowly strengthen our inner powers of perception by exercising them, and initially this seems to have no particular effect. This perception does, however, grow stronger until it reaches the border of shadow-land and begins to perceive itself as spiritual reality. This happens first in creative thinking where we no longer merely reflect images but come to a point where the creative process that takes us from fluctuating movement to form and figure is “done.” For example, you sit on a seat in the woods, close your eyes and try to meditate. In the course of this you completely forget that you are sitting on that seat; but when the meditation ends the outside world comes back to your awareness. You then make a discovery relating to sensory perception. There may be leaves rustling in the wind. When you come back from your meditation the rustle is like a roar—for a couple of seconds at most—then it returns to normal. For a brief moment, you lived in immediate sensory perception without phantoms or connection to objects. An experience such as this shows how greatly reduced the quality of sensory perception is in everyday life. We thus have two aspects: on one hand, rising to active, effective and creative thinking; on the other, rising from the phantoms of sensory perceptions to their source-spring in the living, active elemental world. The two then begin to work together—like breathing. With every step forward in creative thinking comes absorption of the true qualities in the world we perceive and vice versa. The roaring sound that is part of the reality in the world of the senses, the elemental world, will vanish the next moment unless it is absorbed into creative thinking. When the two begin to work together, a new breathing process begins—not in air this time but between thinking and sensory perception, and one enhances the other. 2 Within this new activity, we initially catch onto only a “snippet,” as it were, of the etheric world, our own ether body. This snippet tends to vanish immediately from our conscious awareness unless there is further reinforcement. We are under an illusion if we think we can progress in this field of perception and thinking without making any changes in our personal life. The snippet is connected not just with the ether body of the head, which is the nearest, but with the whole human ether body. It is a time organism and lives in the whole of our biography. We can try and reinforce it by going back through our own life, one situation after the next, year after year, all the way to our childhood. Later, we survey the whole from a higher 45